Niamh O’Connor at Urban Threads has an interesting angle on the recent phenomenon of skill badges. Rather than selling the badges, they’re selling (licensing?) the designs, enabling anyone with access to an embroidery machine to embroider their own badge or garment. She’s especially interested in targeting hackerspaces and is prepared to offer free designs to these groups. (Apparently the above designs are not necessarily included in their offer…)

Any space that gets an embroidery machine can get in contact with us at [email protected] and we’ll offer some free designs of their choice to get their collection started! In general, we’re just looking at supporting the community in any way we can, I think hackerspaces are a totally rad idea and we think we can offer designs that would appeal to the hacker demographic.

These spaces you guys are creating seem like a perfect place to kickstart the more specialized areas of crafting… sergers, quilting machines, knitting machines, all kinds of stuff that normal folk sometimes don’t have the money to get their hands on, not just areas for knitting and the like, but really a place they can grab tools they can’t usually access. We ourselves have worked with two local designers who said they would love to use machine embroidery on their designs if only they could get access to a machine. We love what we do, but we understand that the cost of machines can sometimes be prohibitive for some people to try it out.

So, if your group has one of these machines and would like to play around with Urban Threads’ designs, be sure to drop Niamh a line.

Hi, UT here. Just to clarify, these designs are not listed as free on the website, but they may be included in the designs chosen in the free package for Hackerspaces. Also, these designs are releasing this week through Friday, as of this posting only “Geek For Life” is live, so keep your eye on our website this week for all of them! For formats, please include your machine type and preferred formats in your e-mail. We offer DST, EXP, HUS, PCS, PES, SEW, ART, JEF, VIP, VP3 and XXX. We’re exited to support any hackerspace hosting an embroidery machine! Hope that answers any questions.